Tag Archives: Mion Campaign Setting

That’s not to say my campaign didn’t have issues. It has a lot of issues, and I’m actually pretty worried about them. All of the issues that I’ve seen have nothing to do with the system, have nothing to do with the campaign… they all have to do with meatspace-related factors that are really hard to get around.

Time Issues

One of the things I’ve noticed that I’m
having a harder time with is time vs. the number of players I have. Our
role playing nights are heavily constrained by time. We meet once every
two weeks (the alternating week is a different campaign run by someone
else) and we start at 19:00, ending at 21:30. That gives us 2.5 hours
or, more realistically, two hours.

Two hours isn’t enough time for
my games, the way they’re run now. I keep having to shorten combats (as
otherwise they end up running the game really late), and that’s not
fair for the players who are looking forward to stabbing something. I
keep having to cut off banter between players, as it is taking up over
half of our time available (as you’ll see in the next adventure
update)… and that’s not fair for the players who are using this as
their primary social interaction.

It sucks. I think my
adventures might be better suited toward a “once a month, five hours on a
Sunday” type of thing instead, and that’s… not so great for my
players.

A couple of things I have done:

Change how I handle Initiative.

Basically, I put everyone’s names on notecards (along with any foe) and sort them by rolled init. I call out whomever is first and give a heads-up if another PC is after that so they can plan their turn.

This works great for the PCs that actually plan their turn. Problem being, I only have two of those.

It did stop me from forgetting enemy turns at least, so that’s nice.

I’m trying out a new init system in the intermission adventures. More on that in that write-up.

Keep track of time.

I’m using computers in some way anyway, so I can always see a clock. I keep track of time and try to poke people along if I notice a scene taking a bit too long.

Unfortunately, it makes me feel bad because some of these scenes are great… if I had fewer players, that is.

Players

I
love my players, I really do, but I have six of them, two of which are
playing remotely in another timezone. It makes running the game quite
difficult; I don’t have the ability to give each player time to shine in
each game when the game only ends up lasting two hours. My ideal player
count is three, for reference, so six is a problem. I don’t want
to kick people out of the game, so this is a bit of a problem. In six
or so months, we’ll be down to five players semi-permanently, so this
will get slightly better. Also, I have two players who tend to drown out
other players in terms of volume (both audio volume and frequency of
speaking). I don’t really have a great answer for this problem,
unfortunately.

Also, few of my players actually respond to
anything outside of the session itself. That’s rather infuriating to me,
as it means I can’t prep all that easily.

Remote Play

The
remote play is being a bit of a problem, as that causes issues with
interactivity – I can’t give physical props around without literally
snail-mailing them, I can’t easily draw out a map on the fly (although
I’m working on that), and I can’t use audio or lighting to my advantage.

There are, however, a lot of things I have solved for remote play, and I thought I’d share some of that in this section. Most of them are tech based.

What I’d like to do at some point is use
two cameras – one on me, one on the players in the room. I haven’t had
much of a chance of looking into this, as I’m concerned that I’m going
to start having audio sync issues from this, but I think this is
doable… provided that I’m okay with stretching a cord across the room.

The video capture device itself is a Startech USB3HDCAP, for reference. Works well, no real complaints.

I can use the video output on my
Surface Pro 3 as a video input into my video capture device, throwing an
HDMI switch in front of it. It’ll work, although it means running a
cord across my living room again.

Other option, and the one I’m
going to try this week if I have enough time, is to use video capture
software on my laptop to capture the contents of my Android tablet. Then
all I should need is a drawing app on my tablet (I have seven
installed) and I should be good to go.

It doesn’t help with improvised things
though. My adventures this act have been around 60% improv, 40% prep,
and that’s about twice as much prep as normal for me.

Time to prep

I’ve… had a rough year, to put it politely, and that’s left me with little brainpower to spend on prep. Naturally, this is the most prep heavy campaign I’ve had in over a decade. I keep having to cut some corners on my prep and I don’t like it.

The biggest corner cut so far is that I don’t actually have a map of the Cormick City-State. It has been on my list of things to do for over six months now and all I have is a vague idea as to where a few key areas are. Heck, until the last adventure, two of my PCs didn’t even know that it is a port town or that it was built on a river!

I love drawing maps, and it hurts me to not have one of my lovely megalopolis. It also hurts that I don’t have detailed bits about other things – for instance, having prepared descriptions of random NPCs and the like. I’m spending my prep time on the adventures (where it matters more, to be fair) and less on the things that make the adventure more fully fleshed out.

Act 1 was, effectively, the party getting to know each other, starting to explore a new land, finding a new home, and convincing others that this is the Best Place. It took 15 adventures, ending three weeks ago as of when I’m posting this write-up. Below the cut is my general planning notes and so on, a sort-of behind-the-curtain approach. No worries about spoilers now, since the act is finished and I’m only talking about things that have been revealed.

I planned on 6-8 adventures, for reference. There’s been a lot of challenges with this campaign, and I wanted to talk about them. The issues (and some solutions) are in the next post.

Act 1 Structure

Basically, my general outline looked like this:

Introductions -> Exploration -> Players get bored and return to typical adventuring -> I plan out the rest then.

I seriously doubted that my players would enjoy exploring what is basically a new world. My whole initial plan was that I’d do the prep work for that new world, but also have a bunch of things in there in case the players had an Ooo Shiny moment. That… happened, but not in the way I was expecting. That’s good – I think 5 of the 6 players are really enjoying this exploration-focused campaign, and the sixth is still fine with it.

Once it became clear that they wanted to play in my sandbox, my outline changed to this:

Let’s talk about that dreadful DM trick of putting people on rails. I… really don’t do that. I put in some guidelines that I recommend you don’t cross, but that’s about it. What I mean is that my adventure planning doesn’t go “all right, they will do X, then they will do Y, then Z happens, then…”

It goes like this, and this is a summarized snippet from my actual prep:

Players have said that they want to continue on to another potential city site, Site C.

Site C has a lot of personal hazards involved – remnants of an old demonic biomunitions factory, leftover mimics all over the place, and a few other things they didn’t actually find.

Threats to them directly are minimal – they’ll generally succeed as long as they don’t fiddle with things.

When they fiddle:

Weaponized Coconuts act like a very strong cannon blast. Can potentially KO (but not kill) the weakest party member.

Mimics will eat them alive if they get the drop.

They won’t send the mage to open a door like that, so that should be fine.

There is an underground Thieves’ Den that has some useful things in it. They won’t find it without thoroughly investigating.

Gateway to Lem. If they do investigate enough, they’re almost certainly going to stumble over it. Lem’s been waiting for a while, after all. See NPC page for Lem.

If they leave early / conflicts nearby:

Nearby forest has spiders and a Nightmare in it. They already know about the spiders and will probably figure out the Nightmare.

Mountains to the east make it unlikely they’ll want to travel that way. If they do, <spoilers here>.

They can continue on to Site D. See notes for Site D.

If they dawdle too long:

Rain will occur in two more days. While no longer EvilRain, it still poses a threat to the party by virtue of it being a mini-monsoon.

Creatures will escape the worst areas, going through Site C, so they’ll probably start getting into conflicts here.

See what I mean? The players are the ones who told me what they were going to do (at the end of the previous adventure) and all I’m doing is working around them planning-wise. They’re free to leave at any time and I’ll adapt, but there are some geographic clues in that this is the region they want to be in. It isn’t Railroading as I have no idea what they’re going to do (although I’m pretty good at predicting it), but it isn’t a complete free-form game either; I know they’re not going to want to spend the time going through mountains, so that’s effectively a barrier to them for the time being.

This is one of the areas of GMing that I’ve been praised on, and I’ve generally followed a similar pattern with respect to rails vs. sandbox ever since. This particular game is a bit more sandboxy than my normal, but that’s part of the premise.

Conflicts

I’m… not so great with D&D combat. In fact, due to time issues (see my next post), I’m not so great at combats as a whole. My games usually average a combat every other adventure, and this one had six combats in fifteen adventures. However, that’s not the only type of conflict.

As the PCs already know, there are eight groups of people investigating Dis. Each group of people are separated out a bit… except for one pair. The PCs are one member of that pair, and there is another group that they were pretty much inevitably going to encounter.

They weren’t going to be hostile, but potentially unintelligible and were probably going to cause some problems if they weren’t addressed early enough. What I didn’t know was how they were going to resolve it – after all, this was like the third adventure or something.

The conflict mentioned is that a parade of Water Elementals were going through the river right next to the party as one of the “events” that was going to happen within the first few days the PCs were on Dis. I rolled to see which day it would happen, and it happened on day one or two (I can’t remember which now). No one in the party knew Aquan, but someone did know Tongues… on both sides of the groups, as it turned out. They ended up initiating conversation and talking with a random water elemental, who eventually directed them to their so-called leader, a djinn of some variety.

The party was quite diplomatic (not too surprising in hindsight) and the two groups are generally on friendly terms with each other. Without that first encounter though, they were going to be royal pains in the neck of the party throughout the first act (and likely beyond). Basically, my players are really good at avoiding conflict when feasible, and I always like to make multiple options on how to resolve something possible.

The other major conflict that I knew was going to happen was back in the city. As the PCs are now aware, there is something fishy going on in the City-State, and at least some of that fishiness has to do with Necromancy. There were several potential events that the players would end up seeing throughout the city when they returned, and they hit the nasty one right off the bat.

There is also the whole Bertrum thing (that I knew was going to be an end-of-act boss, unless if they abandoned the whole Homestead plot entirely). I figured that one would end in combat, although I was surprised that they didn’t pick up on the hints a bit earlier.

All other conflicts that they were working through? Yeah, those were all improvised or just “hazards” planned, like the above. These three were the only ones that were planned from the beginning and everything else was going to be based on how the PCs did things. They… wanted to explore. So I let them explore.

Exploration / World Building

Oh boy did they explore. They actually explored pretty much the entire region I had expected them to explore throughout acts one and two, which is a majority of the reason why it took longer than I expected. They found two very powerful entities that they’re seemingly on friendly terms with, they’ve discovered the prior mentioned water elementals, they’ve looked at all of the potential city sites I had spotted out ahead of time in their little region of Dis… really, they hit all of the high points (and several of the detailed points). A lot of this I prepped well in advance; I had the regional map completed by the end of the third adventure and I have a less-specific world map completed by the fourth.

I enjoy world building, and I got the distinct idea that the players enjoyed it as well.

One thing I’m a bit disappointed in is the general lack of wonder as how weird Dis really is to them. Mion (the world that everyone in the party came from) exists on the inside of a cube world. The stars and planets seen from Mion are rips in space that allow them to see outside of the cube, and the sun is a giant heat source that sinks into the waters to the east and west on a daily basis. Dis, on the other hand, is a much more realistic world – round world, orbits a star, etc. Problem being, that’s what is “normal” to the players, so I think that fell a bit flat. My fault.

Progression / Rewards

This campaign is a bit lighter than normal in terms of rewards. Mostly because they were out in the middle of nowhere and the rewards were things they’d find. No one was paying them (yet) to do this, they weren’t taking loot off of dead monsters, they were explorers.

On the other hand, I sped up XP growth a bit. I don’t think the players noticed, given how at least one of them was complaining about how slow they were leveling, but that’s because I wasn’t exactly giving it to them easy. Things hit hard and fast because I didn’t have enough combats to justify a more traditional D&D grind. The party went from level 4 at the start of the act to level 8 by the end.

Also, in case if anyone is curious: I like starting PCs out at level 4. They’re still low enough level to have fun with, but they’re getting abilities that make them a bit more unique compared to each other. I mean, there are two monks in the party with almost-identical stats (swapping Charisma and Intelligence, basically); without having some of their monk path abilities, they’d be completely identical mechanically.

Beyond Act 1

At the moment, they’re in Intermission adventures. Basically, I gave the PCs some downtime for what they want to do, and they wanted to go start a sidequest they received from Lem a while ago. So, I did some planning and prep (for once, this sidequest is around 80% Prep / 20% Improv) and set them out on it. It’ll give me more time to set up Act 2.

Act 2 will start when the PCs return to Dis with their colonists and start making the town. It’ll have a lot more time skips, as I don’t think the players are all that interested in mundane day-to-day life stuff. Act 2 will probably have less exploration (although still the dominant factor in the adventures, most likely) and more political intrigue.

The South Cormick Tax Association (read: Thieves’ Guild) revolted by some means, leaving a whole lot of very unhappy people (and tax collections halted via strike). Meanwhile, part of the party went after an orb of hallucinations… er… prophecy, which gave them disturbing visions of the future.

Present in this adventure:

Elena, Elven Rogue-like-Bard

Nocturne, Tiefling Cleric-like-Sorceress

Galwyn, Gnome Paladin-like-Cleric

Karma, Orcish Drunk-like-Monk

Dharma, Human Saijin-like-Monk

NPCs mentioned in this adventure:

Defender Yani Tyverius, Orcish Paladin of the Altecian Temple (and representative from the Unity Council on Religion)

Bertrum, an adventurer from a different search party than the PCs. Enchanter/Necromancer? No one is quite sure.

This is the adventure where the proverbial excrement hit the ventilation system – the City-State of Cormick Council Meeting.

First, the party had learned (either in Adventure 14 or in this adventure) that three members of the council would not be attending. Tanzain had a prior appointment with the Habib Conglomerate and, when the council meeting was rescheduled, had a conflict he couldn’t deal with. Two others, however, did not attend – both Grothern Faan and Horin were no-shows. All three had sent their hidden ballots along in advance.

The party attended the council meeting held in the Tower of Power – the original tower that once held all of South Cormick (no really – this was from the original one-shot that started the previous campaigns). It had been spruced up to act as a meeting hall for Very Special Occasions – like a meeting that might dictate the future of South Cormick’s population and the population of the refugees that are starting to trickle in from the disaster of the city of Cannot Reach Because Cat*. Hundreds of people from town were in attendance.

The party put their diplomatic faces on and argued their case. They quickly realized they might not quite have had as much support as they thought, as Cheryl started asking some pretty important fiscal questions that led to some negative feelings.

The vote came back 4-3 in their favor, however, likely due to their persuasion skills (read: it was 5-2 against before they started talking to NPCs, but the party didn’t know that). As the meeting drew to a close, someone voiced an objection.

That someone was a 25? long skeletal dragon. That objection was a breath weapon attack on a surprise round, hitting the literal hundreds of people in that room. Lots of casualties, including bringing Cheryl to the brink of death and heavily injuring the remaining present members of the council… except Myra.

Myra, on the other hand, got charmed right before, by a surprise guest – Bertrum.

Bertrum was a mage of an adventuring party similar to this one. One that failed. They went off exploring a different plane with only a few members coming back. The party knew this, as they went around asking about the people in the party. The only bits that were being repeated were, basically, “Poor Bertrum. They never found his body!”

The party, naively, thought the phrase was that he was killed. Ha ha ha NOPE. Bertrum attacked the party. Strangely, Elena had actually figured most of this out ahead of time, but didn’t put enough pieces together to figure out exactly who on the party attacked. Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, as Bertrum arrives on the scene, being pleased as punch in charming what he viewed as his greatest foe.

The battle was hard fought… but short. Partially because we didn’t get to the battle until late in the adventure and partially because of some amazing rolls. Defender Tyverius (She’s SUPER EFFECTIVE against undead dragons, who knew!) and Commander Horus joined them, as did a contingent of guards with handguns (which mostly missed, but eh, thoughts counting and all).

The party all scattered and focused on backup. Karma went to go help Cheryl, surprising pretty much everyone, and actually managed to bring her back from the brink of death. Elena countered the charm effect on Myra (with, once more, a super lucky roll). Myra pretended to still be charmed afterward, but gave Elena a knowing wink. Galwyn helped her comrade-in-faith (even if it is a different / opposing faith) and went all smitey on the dragon. Dharma went after the dragon as well, swapping to Bertrum after finding his attacks less effective than normal. Nocturne played support (firing a few volleys at Bertrum as well), but ended up a bit distracted by Myra.

After deciding that the ruse has played its purpose, Myra cast Harm on Bertrum. A Divine Sorcerer magic sourced Harm, of the identical casting style and effect (although more powerful) as Nocturne. Nocturne may have finally found her first lead about her family.

After a bit, the party + support helped take out the Bone Dragon. They took out Bertrum shortly after, whose body simply disappeared. Turns out that Bertrum was a simulacrum – very powerful necromancy that allows someone to basically create a lesser double of themselves. Also explains the whole “never found his body” part.

* – not the actual name, but I couldn’t reach my notes at the time and the name has kind of stuck. I’m probably going to rename the city something that would have the initials CRBC somehow.

The sun rose and someone got up on the wrong side of the bed – namely, pretty much everyone. The Monks received word that their Master was in town to pick back up a loaned artifact – the Orb of Prophesy. Karma in particular was quite familiar with the orb, as she couldn’t leave things alone and constantly wanted to touch it, hence the rules of the orb mostly consisting of the phrase “Don’t touch the orb, Karma”.

As per the letter, Karma and Dharma were to recover the orb for their master from the person who borrowed it… and it turns out, the person who borrowed it is none other than Myra, the mayor of South Cormick. After much discussion (and finding out that Nocturne was away shopping), they went off to the Mayor’s office / chamber…

… only to find it completely ransacked and the Mayor utterly pissed off. Overnight, the South Cormick Tax Association (read: Sanctioned Thieves’ Guild) effectively went on strike… and also robbed the Mayor’s office blind. She was in there at the time (she sleeps and… does other things in there) and they basically went in with a distraction and ransacked the place in mere moments – signs that they had some magical help as well.

Naturally, the Orb was one of the things taken. The Orb case was there, they just took the orb out of it. Luckily, it was pretty easy to follow the thieves, as there is something a bit… wonky about that orb.

It is the Orb of Prophesies – basically, it starts spouting out prophesies to anyone that has the case open (OOC, think Bajoran Orb from ST:DS9). They’re not even necessarily good ones, but it does cause you to feel like you’re in said prophesy. Now imagine a completely uncovered orb going through the densest part of town and, well, you have a few thousand people tripping balls. Finding the trail was easy. Getting to the orb, now that’s a bit harder. The box was to keep the orb’s power at bay. Karma, at this point, decides to wear the box on her head. No, I’m not making that up.

Turns out, the thieves ended up going into the City-State aqueduct system to presumably some underground lair. Only they didn’t make it that far, as they started tripping more and more then longer they held on to that orb. The party, after basically hallucinating for an hour trying to get closer, eventually reaches a large viaduct access area. Inside is the Orb, the thieves (who are currently attacking a wall), and an Otyugh (currently attacking a different wall).

None of them could see the party (they’re too busy hallucinating), so Karma decides to go over and swim to the orb, picking it up. From here, Karma gets a vision of the future. After bringing the orb back to the party, everyone else does as well… then Karma remembers to take the orb container off of her head and put the orb in it.

The visions, however, were quite disturbing, with each PC getting a very different look on things. Karma saw a battle in which Dharma was just killed, Elena unconscious, one of the deities of the campaign setting killed next to her, and another figure she wasn’t familiar with trying to talk to her. Oh, and some nasty looking elf having just killed Dharma and about to go after Karma. The deity and the unknown person both looked out of place, Karma figuring out that the other figure is some other deity (The Young Goddess, as she found out later). Karma could only hold on to the vision for a few moments before it faded, but she did notice that she was WAY more powerful in the vision than she is in reality.

Note: Galwyn was not in her vision.

Dharma saw a city under attack. Focusing for a bit, he figured out that this is his future city – the one the party is trying to build – as the entire city was up on stilts like one of their plans. A gigantic gold dragon was breathing fire upon the settlement. Then Dharma turned and saw a figure off in a distance, wearing a very fancy and peculiar white dress with a very long train that just floated behind her, as though she was walking in slow motion. Then Dharma lost hold of the vision.

Elena had a vision of a dismal landscape, a partially destroyed South Cormick. There was an execution going on and, after a bit, she discovered that the person being executed is Myra, the mayor. A mighty axe was raised and fell to her neck, having the executioner’s hood blown off from the blow. Elena then saw that the executioner was none other than Galwyn, their party member. She then lost the vision.

Galwyn, however, had the most unusual vision of all. It started out as a typical prophecy, until someone literally pulled her out of it. She was shaken to wake up by a similarly sized person – a gnome. Galwyn focused for a bit and noticed a sword across her back – Thrin’s personal greatsword. The person in front of Galwyn is none other than Brenda, and not talking to her in a mystical way. According to this vision (and there was discussion back and forth), Brenda is actually the creator of the Orb of Prophecy, having put it there to replace the Water Orb that was once held by the shrine in the clouds (that’s part of the previous campaign). More importantly though, Brenda is currently acting as Thrin – answering prayers, granting powers, the whole nine yards – while Thrin is missing. She says that she knows Thrin is safe, but something terrible may happen in a year’s time – and Galwyn is apparently one of the keys to things happening.

The party continued their fight against the ugly ghouls. With minimal (but not zero) casualties, they manage to defeat the undead… and deal with the after effects. After settling down, they speak with some of the members of the City-State Council… and now, they’ll talk to the rest. Maybe?

So! The party starts out split still from the previous adventure, as Kai and Galwyn speak with Defender Tyverius, the Orcish Paladin representing the religions of South Cormick. As mentioned before, the Defender was not what the party had in mind upon meeting her; she’s a rough and tumble badass fighting Paladin, not a clergy member. Speaking with her, Kai eventually figured out that she was a really good liar… and was trying to suss out their loyalties. After conclusively determining that the party’s loyalties were with the City-State (or, more importantly to her, to the population of the City-State), they seemed to have gained her trust. She did request that they maintain a diverse population in their new town, but that’s not something the party would be resistant to.

Meanwhile, Nocturne and Karma were back at Nocturne’s apartment. Upon entry, they all had the interesting sensation of having the entire apartment smell… of peppermint. Nocturne had asked her roommate (Selena) look up information on a weapon that the party had found back on Dis. That greatsword created a large area of extreme cold around it and seems to have been embedded in the land for quite some time. Well, Selena found the motherlode on information on this (read: She rolled an 18) and not only found information on it, but actually found a replica of the weapon. Seems as though they use this weapon replica as an example as to what not to do when enchanting a weapon. The original weapon was created by a Lich who had a resistance to cold. The weapon has the ability to generate an aura of cold… that also impact the wielder of the sword.

The wielder can dial down the size of the aura, but it will always affect the wielder. Unfortunately, that means that someone needs to pick up that weapon to dial it back. It might be possible to telekinetically manipulate it, but at this time it seems to be a task the party won’t be able to handle… for now.

The other two parties eventually rendezvous back at Nocturne’s apartment, filling each other in on the events that happened… then decide to split the party again. Because of course my players split the party. :)

Party 1 consists of the two more rogue-ish characters – Kai and Elena. They went to the Tax Association to speak with Horin, the tax collector. Horin… is not a nice person. This was pretty clear in the first few moments of negotiation, demanding something from the party in exchange for his vote. Specifically, they wanted something that benefited THEM. Eventually, they got out of him that they wanted something to embarrass or otherwise lord power over Myra. Seems they don’t have a great relationship, to put it mildly.

That would be when Elena starts RageBarding. Didn’t help that Horin actually picked her pockets (and was partially caught by Kai), but they started flinging invectives at each other. The party left, but likely not with Horin’s support.

Party 2 consisted of Dharma and Nocturne. They first stop by the Museum of the Young Goddess to investigate a lead on a corpse. A roughly thousand year old corpse of a high priest of a long forgotten deity that doesn’t have any power. This makes Nocturne and Dharma’s first introductions to the Cult of the Young Goddess; they had a short tour by a Curator, the term for a monk of the cult. Seems as though the cult are made up of Explorers and Curators; Explorers are more like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft – they go out adventuring to learn new things and collect artifacts to return back to the Museums. The Curators protect the artifacts in the Museum and cultivate knowledge of the areas around the Museums. They’re a fairly small religion, but seem to be really helpful. They provide the party with a map of all known former holy sites of the various religions in Mion.

Afterwards, they go and visit Grothern Faan. Or at least attempt to. The one who is well known for having cranial rectal inversion syndrome had a secretary who said that the next time he would be available would be in a month and a half. Not only does every other member of the Council that mentioned Archmagi Faan think he has cranial-rectal inversion syndrome, but apparently so did his secretary.

The party returned to one location and planned out what they want to say at the next day’s council meeting, in the hopes of having victory in their council proposal. After some information gathering (read: skill checks), they determine that their chosen site would be able to support a population of 10,000 and provide a large food surplus for future sites as well. They decide to go for an initial population of 2500 and bring more people after each growing season.The party now prepared, we end the night on the eve before the council meeting.

The party met with Tanzain Habib, the de facto leader of the Merchant’s Guild / Habib Conglomerate. Having spoken about the rest of the members of the council, the party had decided to go speak with them when some bandits attacked Honest Habib’s Discount Defense in broad daylight. The party fought them off and gave chase, but their leader exploded with necromantic energies upon his death, creating two ghouls in his place…

Present in this adventure:

Kai, Aaracokra Ranger-like-Rogue

Elena, Elven Rogue-like-Bard

Nocturne, Tiefling Cleric-like-Sorceress

Galwyn, Gnome Paladin-like-Cleric

Karma, Orcish Drunk-like-Monk

Dharma, Human Saijin-like-Monk

These two ghouls seemed to be quite large – significantly larger than the grenadier that they spawned from, and had some various magics about them. Unfortunately for the party, none of them could figure out what was going on fast enough.

Karma and Kai each took one of the ghouls, dealing massive amounts of damage to them. Dharma finished one off, and that’s when they discovered the problem. The ghoul exploded in acid, nearly knocking Karma unconscious, killing five innocent bystanders, and covering a wide area around the town fountain with some goo that seemed to radiate some necromantic energy.

That’s when the party learned that the trick of the battle wasn’t defeating the ghouls, but figuring out a way to do it without massive casualties. After some lucky rolls with Dispel Magic from Nocturne and an inspiring song and nat20 persuasion from Elena, they got the vast majority of the townsfolk out of the way and cleaned off. Galwyn and Kai physically moved off the others, but they still had one nearly-dead ghoul to contend with that hits well above its weight class.

What the party didn’t know was that two more ghouls were going to spawn where the townsfolk died very shortly, but luck once more favored the party as they figured out that they could counteract the necromancy with some holy water. After taking out the last ghoul (blocking the explosion of acid) and dousing the acid puddles formerly known as innocent bystanders, the encounter drew to a close.

The party had a fairly long talk with the Bottle Patrol (1) and a nearby Hieron of Altecia who provided the holy water. No accusations were given, as this event was witnessed by literally-thousands of people, but Elena realized that someone had to have controlled these ghouls – they were acting with intelligence rather than out of general malice toward the living, so they likely had a necromancer controlling them. Whomever it was was long since gone, however, and the party went off to the baths to not be covered in a fine green goo take a short rest before resuming their actual quest.

At this point the party has split up into three groups.

Group one consisted of Elena and Dharma. They went off to speak with Commander Horus Kinto, leader of the Cormick City-State Legion and newly appointed member of the city council. Their journey was brief, for Horus was in his office and had an opening for them to walk in and talk. Their talks were direct and to the point (as the party had no reason to lie), with Elena turning the diplomacy up to 7. Things went well as they discussed how they planned on dealing with the security of their proposed colony location, but Dharma picked up on something.

Whatever Horus’ motives may be outwardly, he seems far more concerned with the food security of the new colony than the actual physical security. Elena pointed out that South Cormick didn’t just have the world’s largest army, but the army was larger than many city’s entire populations. They didn’t necessarily have the best training in the world because they simply didn’t need it. However, that didn’t mean it was going to be fighting itself, and Elena and Dharma came to the conclusion that Horus is likely more worried about a civil war than any outward threats.

Group two consisted of Nocturne and Karma. They first went to Cheryl, a local seamstress and the jurist member of the city council. They had afternoon tea. Apparently, this impressed Karma who asked Cheryl to be her grandmother. Cheryl accepted wholeheartedly. They talked for a few hours… but didn’t realize until after the fact that Cheryl was driving the conversation the entire time. Seems that she really does have a razor sharp intelligence beyond her confused outwardly appearances, but Nocturne and Karma have no idea where she actually stands on the debate.

Next, Nocturne and Karma are heading to the Museum of the Young Goddess – effectively like a shrine to the deity, only the Young Goddess’ impressions of religion are… well, unorthodox would be an understatement. This will happen on the next adventure, however, as we were running low on time.

Group three consisted of Galwyn and Kai, an unusual combination. They approached the Grand Shrine of Altecia, the largest building in the Cormick City-State… by a few inches, apparently. The Shrine opens up to some absolutely divine wide open spaces with lots of natural light providing a beautiful ambiance to the center of faith. Kai, however, has his thoughts turn to the treasures, which appear to be completely on display with absolutely no visible traps of any kind whatsoever – everything screams “honey trap” to him. Galwyn is a member of the Church of Thrin, the main rival to Altecia, and seems to hold a bit of a competitive nature toward the hierons of Altecia. The initiates who greeted her certainly seemed to be equally as competitive, but they arranged a meeting with Defender Tyverius all the same. Yani Tyverius was definitely not what they were expecting though – a rough looking old warrior, she’s an orc with a rather nasty falchion and battered shield with spiked leather armor… that she’s wearing in the middle of the grand shrine.

We stopped there for the night, as it was 21:30 my time and 22:30 for some of the players; we still need to work tomorrow, after all. We will be picking back up with Group Three in two weeks.

Note: I had some DM notes I made for the previous adventure that I didn’t know if people would actually want to read. It goes more into the meta of my game, my thoughts, the creatures that may be fought, and so on. Nothing spoilery though, so still fine if a PC reads.

The party has returned to the Cormick City-State after traveling for about a month in the plane of Dis. Having found their initial colony site location, they’ve returned to report back to Myra, the succubus mayor of South Cormick and the one who sent them on this journey to begin with. Not all is what it seems, however, and the party is starting to realize they’re a pawn in a potentially global game of the apocalypse.

Present in this adventure:

Kai, Aaracokra Ranger-like-Rogue

Elena, Elven Rogue-like-Bard

Nocturne, Tiefling Cleric-like-Sorceress

Galwyn, Gnome Paladin-like-Cleric

Karma, Orcish Drunk-like-Monk

Dharma, Human Saijin-like-Monk

Today was the day of their meeting with Tanzain Habib, the de facto leader of the Merchant’s Guild / Habib Congolmerate. Tanzain is a Dragonborn NPC they’ve met before, effectively with the personality of the memed Teddy Roosevelt combined with Sir Hammerlock. Known to be Myra’s current “favorite” and is more than just rumored to be frequently sleeping together, Tanzain is an upcoming merchant in the city of South Cormick, specializing in equipment for mages and defensive magical goods for all. His shop is in the Enchantment district of South Cormick, just south of Portal Park.

The party entered his shop, noting how different everything looked. Unlike other members of the Habib Congolmerate, Humble Habib’s Discount Defense looks more like a modern mall shop than a shady mercantile business – everything is well it and out in the open, with only an office upstairs and no real inventory staging area; if they have it, it is on display with a price tag and without haggling. Posters are up along the walls detailing deals they have going on – mostly of the “buy one for you and a second gets donated to a poor student mage” variety. Kai (PC Aarakocra Ranger-like-Rogue) and Elena (PC Elf Rogue-like-Bard) notice an unusual density of traps in the room – each individual item is trapped, which would be highly unusual given that most merchants simply pay protection money to the Tax Collectors.

Having gone upstairs to the office, the party sits on the floor engaged in a conversation with Tanzain. Well, other than Karma, who is too busy eating and obsessing over sticky buns. They find out the identities of the rest of the Cormick City-State Council, as there was a large amount of turnover while they were gone. There are the two council members they know – the succubus mayor Myra and Tanzain, but there are five they do not.

Myra Cormick, mayor of South Cormick (Succubus Shapechanger). Myra has been the mayor of South Cormick ever since it was a sleepy city that was recovering from some bizarre thefts. An unusual choice, she quickly became popular with the locals, both for obvious reasons and because the previous group of heroes who saved the town (read: prior campaign) threw their support behind her. She’s known for having her selection of romantic partners throughout the town and isn’t exactly closed about what goes on in those relationships, but has quickly become the steadfast protector of the City-State that she is routinely re-elected for. Strongly in favor of protecting all immigrants and refugees and will absolutely call people out for responding otherwise. She’s responsible for bringing South Cormick’s population up to an eye-watering six million people.

Horin, the representative of the South Cormick Tax Association (Enby Halfling). The SCTA, for those of you unfamiliar with the campaign setting of mine, is a euphemism for “officially sanctioned thieves’ guild”. South Cormick is ultimately a heavily-Chaotic Good city at heart, and it shows. Horin is a nasty little hobbit of a halfling, having been in this city for at least thirty years as a “tax collector”. Tanzain has a low opinion of them (”they’re an asshole”). The PC Kai (Avian Ranger-like-Rogue) is a member of this organization.

Defender Tyverius, the representative of the Unity Council of Religion (Female Orc – note that Half-Orcs don’t exist in this world and full Orcs effectively replace Half-Orcs). The previous member was a priest of Thrin (the deity that Galwyn, the party cleric, belongs to), and Tyverius is a Paladin of Altecia (Thrin’s rival, although at this point more of the “sports rivalry” type of rival than anything else). Tanzain says that Tyverius is a staunch protector of the innocent and comes from the neighboring Morken Sands.

Archmagi Grothern Faan (Male Gnome), head of the Mage’s Guild of South Cormick. Tanzain seemingly couldn’t resist mentioning that he seems to have “cranial-rectal inversion syndrome” and is effectively the archtypical professor everyone has had and utterly hates, yet seems to never be fired and always thinks he’s right. Subtle clues to the party were left that Tanzain’s opinion of the Archmagi are actually lower than he lets on. Perhaps he was a friend of the previous head of the guild? Nocturne (PC Sorcerer)’s roommate is a member of the guild.

Commander Horus Kinto (Male Elf), leader of the Cormick City-State Legion, which is chosen by the city-state council. This was actually the vote the council had the day prior, and Tanzain knows little about Horus.

Cheryl (Human Woman), a local seamstress. The City-State has a Jury-style position open to provide random citizens direct representation on the council for a one month duty shift, and this month is Cheryl. Multiple members of the party actually know Cheryl, and she’s OoC described as a lot like Rose from The Golden Girls, although perhaps she has a razor sharp wit hiding things, but probably just very very … unfocused.

All of this is good and all, but a shout from downstairs interrupts their conversation. Some bandits have brazenly attacked Honest Habib’s Discount Defense in broad daylight, smashing the window in the front of the shop and threatening everyone inside. A surprisingly-challenging fight ensues and some innocent shoppers end up in the way and knocked out for a while. As the fight was drawing to a close, the boss bandit / grenadier runs and takes a hostage – a random passerby. This being in the Enchantment district of South Cormick, that meant the random passerby was an apprentice mage, who used subtle casting to cast grease on themselves and the grenadier while a party member (Karma) distracted him with digging a hole (don’t ask), allowing them to slip away. Pummeling the grenadier, they kill the boss but something is off. The unnamed sorceress yells everyone to stand back and the boss explodes in some type of necromancy, giving rise to every city planner’s worst nightmare:

A set of ghoul-spawn in the middle of an extremely dense and crowded city street in broad daylight. And that’s where the adventure ends for the night.

Note: I’ve decided to start chronicling my D&D campaign here. I can go back and give summaries of previous adventures if anyone actually ends up reading this, but it’ll help me as a DM actually remember the weird stuff that ends up happening.